In order to ensure the ongoing quality of the platform as the bank pushes into new settlement activities, CLS Services identified CAST as a way of providing factual information on the state of their applications, allowing them to identify any deviations to agreed standards and architecture.

Mr. Sean Daly, Programme & Service Delivery Director at CLS Services (CLS) said that CAST would give CLS visibility on application quality across the application development lifecycle.

"CAST will enable us to better manage our outsourcing relationships and enhance our existing processes by providing us with invaluable information on the quality and quantity of work delivered by our application development and maintenance outsourcing partners, across technologies and platforms," said Mr. Daly. "We searched the market place and found that only CAST could provide the comprehensive, detailed management metrics that enable outsourcing costs to be justified and ensure we are getting value for money."

CLS Services oversees the daily running of the CLS Bank settlement service, which handles an average of 340,000 instructions from over 1,300 financial institutions daily with a value of US $3.9 trillion and accounts for a significant proportion of the world's foreign exchange settlements.

"The addition of CAST helps us mitigate risks associated with outsourced development and protects our key applications from downtime and failures," said Mr. Daly. "By monitoring the quality of the code delivered to CLS we are able to provide agile applications to meet market, regulatory and client needs."

"And given that it is an automated process, using CAST ensures that there is little overhead in continuously monitoring deliverables."

Also worth noting is that the outsourcing organisations that CLS works with have bought into the use of the CAST solution. "The information that CAST delivers provides the foundations for constructive discussions between us and our providers," said Mr. Daly. "It is going to help our relationships with our suppliers."

"We are continuing to see increased interest from financial services organisations as they look to better manage both their internal and outsourced application development," said Mark Slater, UK Country Manager for CAST.

"Adoption by a leading organisation like CLS shows that managing the risk of mission critical applications is becoming front-of-mind for senior IT executives within the financial services industry. Poor quality applications can be a weak link in organisations, with massive impact both on a company's reputation as well as its balance sheet," said Mr. Slater.